Rule Forty Two: The Self-Aggrandizing Website of Gavin Edwards

Can you identify famous albums just from the initials of their titles? For example, presented with H. O. T. H., can you puzzle out that we’re talking about Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy? (I leave it to you to decide whether the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back is a subtle Zep tribute from George Lucas.) Does M. O. M. M. lead you to Stevie Wonder and the great album Music of My Mind? Then you’re ready to play the Album Initials Quiz.

Below you will find a list of 20 albums, reduced just to the initial letters of their titles. I have not included any punctuation: if there are any commas, apostrophes, or parentheses in the original title, they’ve been ignored. And I’ve made no distinctions between words that were upper-case or lower-case in the original title: every single word has been reduced to a single letter.

The albums’ release dates range from 1965 to 2015. I can’t guarantee you’ll know every single record, but none of them are particularly obscure. These are mostly very famous albums, in genres including rock, pop, hip-hop, and R&B. Most of them were major chart hits and/or the sort of album you’ll find on greatest-records-ever-made lists; even the lesser-known entries are well-regarded albums by major artists. I’m not trying to stump you with import-only collections of B-sides.

Give yourself one point for each time you identify the artist behind the album. I’ll put the answer key up in the comments section later today. Have fun!

1. Prince, Around the World in a Day
2. U2, All That You Can’t Leave Behind
3. Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home
4. Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
5. Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town
6. Neil Young, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
7. Sinead O’Connor, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got
8. Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
9. Introducing the Hardline According to Terence Trent D’Arby
10. Drake, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late
11. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
12. Talking Heads, More Songs About Buildings and Food
13. LL Cool J, Mama Said Knock You Out
14. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols
15. Leonard Cohen, New Skin for the Old Ceremony
16. PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love
17. The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
18. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
19. David Bowie, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
20. Fiona Apple, When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He’ll Win the Whole Thing ‘fore He Enters the Ring There’s No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might so When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won’t Matter, Cuz You’ll Know That You’re Right.